A grab bag of themes and tropes of fantasy fiction are brought into play in the wildly ambitious “Wildwood,” the latest stop-motion animated marvel from Laika Studios, the folks who gave us “Coraline” and “ParaNorman.”

It’s another tale of a tween girl facing what her parents warned her about and all they didn’t tell her, of loss and acceptance of that loss and learning when to take responsibility for something awful, and when one gets to blame your parents.

Yes, it’s a bit like “Coraline,” with world-building and themes that rival “The Chronicles of Narnia,” “Lord of the Rings” and “The Owls of Ga’hoole.” It opens with a suicide, plunges into hostage taking and murder and boils over into sprawling and bloody combat pitting the enslaved or marginalized against the powerful and pitiless.

So, a children’s movie? Kind of, but with all that’s wrestled into this somewhat cluttered jumble, it plays more coherently to an older animation/anime fan.

Pru (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) has grown up with the cautionary fairy tales her hippy parents (Maya Erskine and Jake Johnson) tell her baby brother about the unknowns terrors of “The Impassable Wilderness” that borders their corner of Oregon.

She figures she’s outgrown that nonsense, their granola diet and Dad’s passion for knitting and mom’s love of craft fairs. Thus one more warning about not going “outside” when she tasked with babysitting toddler Mac is ignored.

But her heedless hurdle through Portland on her bike, towing the tyke in her no-safety-features-red-wagon, doesn’t just run her into fantasy gaming nerd Curtis (Jacob Tremblay), who’s still into stuff she’s “outgrown.” It puts the baby in peril. A crowd of crows snatch him from a playground.

“Murder of crows,” the nerd corrects her as they dash off in pursuit, unable or unwilling to get adult help. When the crows disappear into the woods, Pru drags Curtis in with her. And that’s when things get really weird. The talking, bickering, armed and uniformed coyotes are their first clue.

Pru’s kid brother has been kidnapped on purpose. And she and Curtis have plunged into an ivy-overgrown combat zone, with mystics and peasant “bandit” barbarians and “Avian” allies in owl and eagle form, an oppressive, Kafkaesque totalitarian state and a rogue Dowager Governess Alexandra (Carey Mulligan) pulling strings, making mayhem and arming for war.

Laika mainstay Travis Knight — he directed “ParaNorman,” “Kubo and the Two Strings” and “Missing Link” — presides over a stop-motion fantasy-adventure decorated with sweeping CGI augmented settings and effects. So as tactile as the animated characters and settings sometimes are, it looks more like “Flushed Away” (by Aardman) than “Coraline.”

His voice cast is so immersed in their characters than you can only pick out the most distinct — Awkwafina and Charlie Day do supporting characters, Angela Bassett is a regal eagle “general” — stand out. Oscar winner Mahershala Ali, Jemaine Clement, Richard E. Grant and even Tom Waits are harder to ID.

That’s not really an issue here. But what is has to be the general “grab bag” clutter of the story, the various agendas of this “principality,” species or neighborhood and the murky messaging not really corrected by closing act proclamations of “what this was all about.”

The occasional droll character and odd bit of banter — “Why DID you bring me here?” “Altruism.” — doesn’t fend off the boredom that sets in for the later acts.

Laika was launched on “Coraline” and the talents of the great animator Henry Sellick (“The Nightmare Before Christmas”). Knight’s “ParaNorman” is still his best film, with “Wildwood” closer to his comedy “Missing Link” in its labored storytelling, if not its epic ambition.

At least the Oregon-based artists of the studio were able to tell a tale set closer to home, among the magical forests, artisans and unreconstructed hippies of Portlandia.

Rating: PG-13, suicide, combat violence, profanity

Cast: The voices of Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Carey Mulligan, Awkwafina, Jacob Tremblay, Richard E. Grant, Tantoo Cardinal, Jake Johnson, Maya Erskine, Amandla Stenberg, Tom Waits, Charlie Day, Len Cariou, Jemaine Clement, Mahershala Ali and Angela Bassett,

Credits: Directed by Travis Knight, scripted by Chris Butler, based on the novel written by Colin Meloy and illustrated by Carson Ellis. A Laika production released by Fathom Entertainment.

Running time: 2:10